In August my long suffering girlfriend and I hiked the beautiful 40 mile Timberline Trail in 4 days and 4 nights. It was our first multi-night trip, so we were both a little nervous. I’ll write a bit about the hike, then go into detail about my preparation and gear list. Wednesday: We got to the trailhead about 6PM, and had a couple of hours easy hiking to reach the camp in the Paradise Park area. We had a taste of things to come with the descent into Zigzag Canyon. These glacier drainage gullies are a regular feature as you hike round the mountain, and gut deep gashes through the otherwise beautiful scenery. An easy five miles today and a nice camp. Great weather all day. 
Thursday: The second day was long and hot. We tried to push as hard as we could to get as many miles in as possible. Sandy River canyon was a magnificent sight from the top. We stopped at the bottom of the descent for lunch and a freshen up in the stream, but the glacier meltwater was too cold for a swim. Crossing Sandy River proved to be pretty easy compared to some of the later crossings. A couple of miles on, and Ramona falls were beautiful. Perhaps we should have camped there? Just after that I pulled a muscle in my back climbing over some rocks. This sucked. The rest of the 4 days were spent in constant pain, and we only had five ibuprofen. 
Friday: We were in no mood to do anything quickly on Friday. I could hardly move and the weather had turned for the worse. The morning was freezing and misty. We eventually packed up the camp and started hiking at about midday. Some concerned day-hikers had an ominous warning of impending thunderstorms, so we made camp after only five miles. I’m glad we did, because I spent the afternoon getting our tent fortified for the impending storm. As the evening drew on the wind picked up, and as night fell all hell broke loose. Rain and gale force winds until dawn. The tent held up remarkably well but I didn’t sleep much. 
Saturday: We started early on Saturday – we only hiked five miles the day before so we had ground to catch up. My only fear for the trip is a giant gully formed by the Elliot Glacier drainage. The trail was washed away by rains back in 2006, and that section has officially been closed ever since. We met up with another group of hikers, and picked our way down the 45 degree, loosely consolidated sand and scree slopes. We had to take special care not to dislodge rocks that might fall on the people below. One section was especially steep, and a rope had been installed. The river at the bottom was a raging torrent, and I’m glad we made it across in one piece. Elaine wasn’t exactly happy with the peril. After Elliot, we continued up and up to the exposed Gnarl Ridge, and beautiful views of the plains of Oregon from the top. We hiked on and on, trying to get to the more sheltered terrain of the Mount Hood Meadows ski resort to camp. We didn’t expect the final obstacle in our path: A river crossing – not particularly difficult, but less than 10 meters from the top of a 20m tall waterfall. One slip would have meant certain death. We were both pretty fed up after that. 
Sunday: Only five miles to do on Sunday and we were back. But what a five miles. We decided to gun it and try to make the earlier bus. Missing it would have meant a four hour wait. But making the bus meant five miles in two hours. Not impossible but it really pushed us. We made it with minutes to spare. Straight home, half an hour in the shower, and a giant takeaway. Mmmmm. Preparation: This was my first multi-night hike with all new gear, so I was a little nervous. I probably over-prepared. But for me, preparation is part of the enjoyment. Navigation:
- Downloaded offline maps of the area to ViewRanger on my Android phone.
- Bought a paper “Green Trails 462S” map which was excellent.
- Annotated the paper map with water and camp locations from the oregonhikers field guide
- Copied the entire text of the field guide to my phone, and annotated the text with the mile markers from the paper map. This helped because the miles quoted in the field guide drifted significantly from the miles marked on the map towards the end of the trail.
- Marked waypoints in ViewRanger for each mile marker on the paper map.
I think I’d probably do all this again. It proved effortless to glance quickly at the phone and work out which mile waypoints we were between. Water was pretty plentiful on the trail, but good camp locations weren’t, so I’m glad of the annotations I made. It was tempting to add the annotations from the paper map as waypoints on Viewranger, but the paper map proved convenient and more detailed than the OpenCycleMap data. It should be noted that my Android phone has replaceable batteries, and I took several spares with me. I wouldn’t recommend relying on a phone without at least having spare batteries. I only used one and a half batteries during the whole four days – switching flight-safe mode on during the day, and the phone completely off over night really extends the battery life. Gear: (apologies for the metric weights) 
Click the image for the original Google Sheet. Feel free to take a copy and use it to organise your own gear. The categories in the last column are: p – in the pack – the base weight. f – food, fuel and water. c – clothes or carried. o – optional clothes that end up stuffed in the top of you pack if it’s hot. My girlfriend came with me, but she lacks my enthusiasm for weighing her underpants, so what went in her pack was a bit of a mystery until the day before we left. However, her pack weighed around 6kg. I was extremely happy with my 8kg. Most of the hikers we met on the trail looked like they were carrying at least twice that. Findings: Here’s my brain-dump of what we did wrong, and what I’ll do differently next time.
- In 4 days, we didn’t even get through one torch battery – I’ll only take 1 spare next time – 75g saving.
- I only got through one and a half phone batteries. Perhaps taking five was overkill? I’ll take 2 spares next time – 95g saving.
- Didn’t use my gaiters – not really sure why I took them. Won’t take them on a summer hike next time – 220g saving.
- My new ZPacks Arc Blast pack was great, but on the last day it started chafing my shoulder a little. I’ll have to sit down with it and work out exactly why.
- The pillow dry bags weren’t really that useful. It was more comfortable to sleep with my face on my fleece jacket. Maybe remove pillow material – 20g saving.
- Would probably be a good idea to take a spare lighter – would have been awful to not have a way to light the esbit tablets – 20g extra.
- My only big mistake was leaving buying water bottles until the last minute. Then we ran out of time and I had to grab what we had in the apartment before setting off in a rush. We ended up with 3 x 1L bottles and 2 x 500ml bottles. I wanted 4 x 1.5L bottles. I’ll make sure to prepare well in advance next time.
- Having said that, having two smaller bottles proved useful when we found a silty stream. We had to leave the water to sit for a couple of minutes to let the sand settle out, then decant it. Having a spare small bottle meant this was a lot quicker.
- Thankfully we didn’t have any problems, but the Esbit tablets would have be completely useless in high wind. Next time I’ll make a wind-break out of aluminium foil. ~20g extra.
- I didn’t use my softshell gloves and they’re much too heavy. ZPacks do a nice set of ultra light fleece mittens that are designed to work under their Cuban Rain Mitts – I’ll take a pair of them next time – 100g saving.
- I was rather worried about my phone getting wet, too dusty, etc. Generally being in the backcountry probably isn’t so good for non specialist electronics. I’ll look for a lightweight waterproof case next. Either that or just put it in a ziploc bag?
- This will be controversial, but I didn’t use my knife. Also, I couldn’t think of a use for it. Could I contemplate going hiking knifeless?
Looks like these changes could save almost half a kilo for next time. Every gram counts!
